If you are interested in learning more about the history of the carceral system in the US, you can take a look over this document belpw, or listen/watch a talk given by Jessica Neptune, Bard Prison Initiative's Director of National Engagement: a historian who focuses on the history of incarceration and the making and the rise of the carceral state.

Here is a brief overview

Incarceration in America from Colonial Period to Today

1. Colonial Period

   1. Confinement was not the major form of punishment

      1. “Sentencing” was extremely arbitrary and based in religious beliefs of right and wrong, good and evil, godly and devil. No two crimes had the same punishment

      2. Much of the punishment for crime was public, and that itself was supposed to be an aspect of deterrence (and shame - we’ll come back to shame).

   2. So when America became its own country, people began to reconsider the punishment system

      1. New country, new laws - specifically uniform ones. They believed this would make a huge change in deterrence. Note: still on deterring crime.

      2. (Every generation has acknowledged that something is wrong and not working about the “punishment” system

      3. They came up with the idea of confinement instead, considering the draconian & public nature before, which they found abhorrent & unfairly cruel

         1. It did not match up with the concept of this new country

   3. And thus, prisons were born. 

      1. Note: they believed that prison/confinement would eradicate crime entirely

         1. Original purpose of this. They quickly realized it was untrue.

         2. Swift and equal punishment under the law leading to uniform confinement would be more humane and deter crime.

         3. And they became cesspools of filth and vice - run by corrupt officials

            1. But the cell itself never came into question

2. Jacksonian Era (1829-1837)

   1. Birth of the penitentiary - influenced by the Quakers

      1. Quakers believe that all are born innocent & could be redeemed.

      2. The answer to crime was still imprisonment, but the meaning of it changed with the penitentiary

         1. First time prison comes to be seen as a place that can fix people

         2. But these were still filled w/people from the margins of society - it has to do with how we define what the rules are, who has rights, but also a reflection of power and access and hierarchy and the means for humans to survive and thrive and persist.

      3. The word “penitentiary” comes from the idea of repentance

      4. Quaker belief that silence cleanses the soul

         1. We get a shift in architecture & solitude

            1. Own cell, own yard - brought in with hoods on so they never saw anyone else the entire time, guards took off their shoes - pure ISOLATION

            2. The cost was too high, not something the public should pay

   2. Then we move into labor camps, but silence, obedience, and labor as a way of cleansing the soul & repenting

   3. We move into workhouses and roadcrews, but it was less abt exploitation and more abt religious morality

      1. “To control the unruly masses”

3. Shift into Contract Labor/Congregate Labor System - Obedience and Control - now it’s more about punishment

   1. Lockstep - to take away a sense of self, or group, control (striped uniforms)

   2. Contract labor rises and factories are built on prison land

   3. Labor could be extracted - only the pretense of redemption remained in the rhetoric - still “silence, obedience, and labor” could bring rehabilitation

      1. Meant to take away a sense of self, and become abt GROUP control

      2. Still places of violence, terror, brutality, and dehumanization

   4. Now businesses can make deals with prisons to utilize the labor of incarcerated people (this model was not yet in play in the antebellum south).

Progressive Era - 1840s Reformers begin to reject systems of labor and control

5. Believe in human perfectibility & start to concern themselves with the causes of crime and human betterment

6. Thought prisons could be places of humane treatment

   1. This is the last generation of “non experts” running prisons

4. Separation + Birth of Asylums

   1. Women, juvenile, asylums

      1. We see the decline of the contract labor system (which was fought for by unions)

      2. Now work can only be done for the State (license plates etc.)

      3. “History doesn’t repeat itself but often rhymes” - Mark Twain

   2. This era was really defined by Modernization (Professionalization) 

      1. People and society were studied scientifically

         1. Rise of social sciences as academic disciplines, sociology, anthropology, but also pseudoscience (eugenics) - Advent of social work - Professionals

      2. Rise of Reformatories (Elmira NY) - Education and Rewards

         1. Starts to be individualistic - this spread over the NE-MW-W

         2. Education mostly given lip service - it was never about advancement, empowerment, or opportunity

         3. Still about fixing broken people

         4. We cannot conform or reform our way out of control

         5. Much of the social sciences that informed this were still about white supremacy and upper/middle class power structures. Prison population still coming from the margins of society

         6. You cannot reform your way out of that coercion and control

5. 1920s - 1950s - 1980s

   1. We saw dozens and dozens of prison riots, rebellions, and resistance to a regime that, in name, was supposed to be about rehabilitation.

      1. By the 20th century, especially mid-20th, the outrage isn’t just coming from reformers, but the critique is coming from incarcerated people (as early as the turn of the 19th century)

         1. Resistence to a regime that in name was abt rehabilitation

   2. Response to 1960s doubling down on rehabilitative language

      1. “Correctional Facilities”

      2. The language of correcting people becomes dominant

      3. Part of the justification of the prison as a place that can fix broken people becomes really a part of the DNA of America, the kind of judicial imagination, criminal justice imagination and allows people who think that they want to do good and create some sort of fair, just, healthy societies buy into the idea that “prisons have this role of doing social good”

      4. Now we have 50+ years of professionals, penologists and more talking about penology in medical terms, prisons as places of “treatment”

      5. These became even more sites of racial disparity

         1. Move from black people being biologically inferior, to black culture as inferior/dysfunctional - our history of slavery and oppression has created this dysfunctional culture - systemic inequality

         2. Now it’s about individuals making bad choices

            1. Nixon (Welfare Queens- single black mothers) - changing language to not be “racist”

      6. Sentencing laws are still at the center of rehabilitation

         1. Rehabilitative penology and the dominance of rehabilitative ideology

         2. Indeterminate bids come to be

         3. Get out as soon as you can prove that you’re “fixed” - PAROLE

      7. But theory never matches reality

      8. Incarcerated people begin documenting their organized critiques that got to academic, and policy making circles

6. They pointed out the incompatibility and flawed logic inherent in the notion that a person could somehow be bettered by being put in a cage, that people could be taught to somehow fuction better in society by being removed from society

   1. Note what actually works: connections on the outside

7. Incarcerated & formerly start to articulate that it is society, not the individual

   1. Incarcerated activists like George Jackson were challenging the notion that they themselves were broken or in need of treatment, but that society is sick

   2. Exposed the underbelly of punitive and exploitative practices that are diguised as treatment and rehabilitation and correction 

   3. Even policies that seemed progressive, like indeterminant sentences are recast as fertile ground for retaliation and discrimination, bc the people in charge of coercion and control are also in charge of determining who is somehow rehabilitated

   4. Now people are asking “What Does Work?” and many answer “Nothing”

      1. This brought people together across the aisle

      2. Started to consider decarceration

   5. Now progressive policies start to be seen/shown as fertile ground for punishment and retaliation - people in charge of coercion and control

   6. Left plans for decarceration

   7. Lyndon Johnson “the war on poverty is the war on crime” (1960s)

   8. The right begins to embrace punishment for punishment’s sake - Prison as a place of restitution and “just desserts”

Punishment Era: By the 1980s into the Clinton Era “punishment for punishment’s sake becomes a bipartisan belief

9. 1st time in America that policy makers abandon the idea that prison can do social good/reform people at all

10. Now retribution itself & disappearance is really enough to put people in cages

11. “Super predators”

12. 3 Strikes Laws - Rule of 3

13. Consideration of “catharsis for victims” was enough of a reason - this was NEW and had never been the purpose of prison before

8. NONE OF THIS WAS INEVITABLE

   1. Brief moment of embracing prisons as pathway to redemption and rehabilitation before it took a punitive turn

      1. In 2023 CA was looking to transform San Quentin to look like a Swedish prison

      2. Note: People ask why prisons are more humane in Nordic countries and I would like you to consider racism inside of this context
         
         The South has a bit of a different history.
         
         

9. Across American History there have been 4 main theories of the purpose and usefulness of prisons

   1. They rotate and mix together depending on the time - a cocktail that justifies & explains the purpose of prison

   2. FIRST ERA - cell considered solely as a deterrent - no one imagined that jail cells would change people (not the OG point) - they thought the problem in the colonial period were the laws themselves (brutal, irrational, not uniform) - If they fixed the laws they could eradicate crime. Uniform, swift, and just laws - humans as rational actors would not commit crime in the first place - never believed the jail cell would get much actual use, just a threat

      1. Fail.

      2. Crime is a social and historical construction - how we define what the rules are, right, AND also a reflection of power, access, hierarchy

         1. Having the means to thrive, survive, and persist - so always marginalized

   3. Next Gen Reformers - Progressive Era - became clear that it was naive to think changing laws would eradicate/deter crime. BUT it held onto the idea of confinement and started to build more jails.

      1. Defined by belief in hard work, religious services, and education (workhouses and road crews)

      2. Note: NOT about profit, but that hard work was religious and uplifting 

         1. “Idleness is the devil’s playground”

      3. Caught on with a group of wealthy religious reformers who had power to run, create, and shape society to control the unruly masses

   4. Rehabilitative Era

   5. Punishment Era

WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO REFORM OUR WAY OUT OF AN INHERENTLY INHUMANE PRACTICE OF PUTTING HUMANS IN CAGES & EXPECTING ANYTHING GOOD TO HAPPEN FOR CENTURIES. REFORM EFFORTS THAT SEEK ONLY TO MAKE PRISONS LESS BRUTAL OR SORT OF LESS DYSFUNCTIONAL PLACES, OR JUST SEEK TO LOWER THE INCARCERATION RATES TO WHAT THEY WERE IN THE 70s OR EFFORTS THAT SEEK TO JUST REDUCE STARK RACIAL DISPARITIES… WE’LL ALL END UP BEING PART OF THIS LONG HISTORICAL NARRATIVE OF FAILED REFORM.